Announcing PING Updates / Stable releases

[Natan]

Ah! that old smbmount is still there. Look for mount.smbfs or mount.cifs, they should be different.

[nickf]

ah right, the only reason I asked is that mount.cifs still can't mount DFS shares, wanted to confirm mount.cifs is verison 1.50.

I get "object is remote" error message when trying to mount the share.

[Natan]

There are tons of google entries about issues with samba mounting DFS shares. Note that these 5 shell commands use different binaries and/or protocols :
- smbclient
- mount.smbfs
- mount.cifs
- mount -t cifs
- mount -t smbfs

There will be a need for experimentation, I think.
Natan

[Natan]

Note: some say you should try this:

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mount.cifs //cos/share/rem /home/me/rem -o user=rem,dom=rdom

[nickf]

I was trying that exact method you posted.

However I did find that if I did:-

mount.cifs \\\\domain\\share\\folder /mnt/folder -o user=user dom=domain

I could mount the DFS share and view its contents, but as soon as I tried to view or navigate to a sub folder I got the same error.

[Natan]

You're not alone...:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/134080
and http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux-ci ... 01888.html

[nickf]

Yeah I've been trawling the web for this problem for quite a while now, pretty much no one has got it working at the moment, but I did read somewhere that with the 2.6.26 kernel and mount.cifs 1.50, it should work.

A link in that launchpad bug report:-

http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux-ci ... 03110.html

Suggest that the 2.6.26 Kernel with the latest "cifs.spnego upcall program"???? might get it working.


We have two sites and we wanted to have a central image repository using DFS. Might have to delay plans for the meanwhile

[Natan]

Why not use FTP ?

[nickf]

We sort of liked the idea of having

\\domain\images

Which would be the same location from both sites. DFS also works out where the nearest copy of the data is. How would we get FTP clients to access the local server for each site? We could try and fudge the DNS but since it is all tied up to AD replication I don't think it would work.

The other option, which is what I will probably do, is just setup another TFTP server in our other site so we can point the PXE boot image at the local server, but it would have been nice to have just used the DFS root.

[Natan]

There are several ways to do it with FTP, DNS is one of them.

But hey, here they say DFS can be mounted, the problem only lies in directory browsing. If you can do it on the shell, we'll find a way to cheat a little about the directory structure through symlinks.

[nickf]

I'm afraid even doing an ls gets the same error.

That link talks about just mounting the active referral server. I am assuming that is what I was talking about just mounting the share on the local server for each site.

[Natan]

Well, there's a newer samba => http://news.samba.org/releases/3.2.4/

They may have solved some DFS issues. Have hope

[Natan]

Hi people,

I'm glad to announce the release of a new BETA of PING. You can download it here.

Many things have been improved. The best one is the possibility to have PING adjust the size of all partitions and contained filesystems, so to take advantage of any remaining free segment.

Another nice improvement is the possibility, now, to define the destination of partitions. It is now possible to record an image, and to define that this 40-GB partition 1 will finally be a 60-GB partition 2 -- or a 20-GB part, if you asked for shrinkage at recording time. See the changelog for details (HDD_Look.txt and HDD_Target.txt). As a counterpart, the hda.part-like files are now deprecated, and won't be used any more.

On our beloved DELL boxes, PING will use these new features to propose to handle the infamous job for you (only record the part containing data, and restore it to the whole drive of the target box). Currently, this feature is not working completely, and you'll have to boot a XP CD to get to the recovery console and run the fixmbr and fixboot utilities -- and I'm still looking for a convenient way to have this run under the linux shell.

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* 3.00.00 2008-10-06
  - Samba upgraded from 3.2.3 to 3.2.4.
  - CLAM AV upgraded from 0.93.1 to 0.94.
  - Added vol_id to the OS (part of udev), so to get filesystems'
    labels, and maybe restore them one day (out of the BS-dd way).
  - Removed smbmount, smbmnt, smbumount. These antiquities were older
    than the samba package installed, and could lead shell users to
    confusion.
  - Added Reiser4Progs 1.0.6 and ReiserFSProgs 3.6.19 to the OS,
    so we can now play with Reiser filesystems.
  - Added Testdisk 6.10 to the OS. Can recover a partition table,
    the MBR, a bootsector, partitions ... great app. Includes Photorec.
  - If the user has forgotten to unzip Partimage.zip to the dir
    he wants to store images in, we'll now create the
    Create_New_Image directory, but not the other ones.
  - Detects unused segments in devices (so we could expand parts).
  - Little bug fix: a cciss directory on a bootable media would
    not be detected (thx Superdac).
  - Added the parameter Extend_Parts_Whenever_Possible.
    Sometimes, you'll restore images to a bigger drive.
    Sometimes, there will be empty space after or between parts.
    Set this parameter to Y if you want PING to extend partitions
    and contained filesystems each time it's possible. If the
    param is not set, PING will ask the user.
  - Reports the end of the /var/log/partimag-debug.log in /tmp/x.log.
  - Don't try any more to use ntfsresize if the unused space is
    ridiculously small --wouldn't do anything anyway.
  - If there's only one partition and you want a local backup,
    PING will now resize not only NTFS but also ext2-3, fat32,
    and hsf+ filesystems (using parted and resize2fs, as parted
    can't handle ext2/3 any more).
  - The antique Partimage.zip's folder Partition_and_Format_ANY_Computer
    has been removed. Instead, write a file in an image directory, and
    call it HDD_Target.txt . Copy the structure of a HDD_Look.txt file
    and adjust to what you want your HDD to look like.
  - The antique Partimage.zip's folder Backup_Local_Hard_Disk has
    been removed. Instead, create an image and ask for tar/gz instead
    of partimage or zsplit.
  - No more .part ; these files must be replaced with a HDD_Target.txt
    file. Sorry, no choice.
  - You can now choose tar+gzip/bzip2 instead of partimage or zsplit.
    I guess this should especially help people cloning linux systems.
    If used to clone a Windows system, ACLs won't be restored.
  - Finally! finally, in the menu used to choose what partitions to
    store, loop until an item is chosen (the Space Bar thing).
    Honnestly, let's call it a Bug fix.
  - If an addon-*.tar.gz file is stored in an image directory, it will
    be untarred to the root of the PING OS before any other image file
    is addressed.
  - If a ping.conf file is stored in an image directory, it will be
    parsed before all other image files are addressed (but second to a
    possible addon-*.tar.gz). The contained parameters will overwrite
    those eventually passed by /etc/ping.conf or the APPEND line of
    syslinux.
  - Add a screen warning if there's data on the disk and it's going
    to be overwritten -- except if AUTO mode is set on, or if new
    param Dont_Warn_Me is set on.
  - Linux kernel: added drivers for nVidia IDE.
  - Linux kernel: added drivers for Marvell SATA (experimental).
  - Dell fix: we now propose users to let us do the job for them.
    If they let us do, when creating an image out of a Dell box,
    we'll store only the part containing the OS and not the two
    Dell parts. We'll also fix the boot.ini for it to boot the now
    first part, and will prepare a HDD_Target.txt file so restoration
    will use all available space on the drive.
  - Howto: mention Unetbootin as a good tool to have a USB device
    boot PING.

You'll most certainly run across a lot of bugs -- and everyone will agree that this version is not finished. In particular, the use of tar/gzip in complement of partimage has not been coded yet. It should bring some kind of incremental storing in a near future.

Regards
Natan

[Curtis8]

Way to go Natan. I hope the Dell image I sent you has helped at least a little.

[Natan]

Not just a little...